Red Queen Colony
What mysteries lurk within?
Hidden among the spires and crevices of the rhyolite canyons in what was once Eastern Arizona, a Red Queen once established her home. It was a nice place. Comfortable for more than two dozen people. But now it is home to nothing but crawling beasts, and forgotten memories.
Purpose / Function
The subterranean arrangement of caves and passages was built to be a comfortable home for a Red Queen and her devoted entourage.
Entries
The entrance to this place is a mere gap between two rhyolite spires. Several meters within is an illusion of a rock wall.
Denizens
The only denizens of the complex are several giant millipedes and centipedes. The Centipedes are armored, aggressive and venomous and will attack any intruders UNLESS those intruders are previous members of the red queen's entourage. The millipedes are also armored, but have very little in the way of offensive abilities. They are poisonous and anything attacking them will be poisoned if they cause any shaken or wound condition through melee attack and they will try to protect any creature deemed friendly. If necessary, the millipedes will wrap themselves around people they are trying to protect, forming a nigh impregnable sphere of armor around them.
Special Properties
In the quarters of the red queen, there is a complex ritual pattern on one wall. In several locations on the pattern there are names of people, each punctuated with a dark brown dot of dried blood. The purpose of this ritual, put in place by some unknown mystic or shaman, is to establish who is considered a friend of the place.
This ritual is actually a binding spell. A spirit of the land is bound by it to assist all those friendly to the red queen and the named followers of her. Any Native Americans in the party will recognize the spirit as that of a Nurturer. In an ironic tragedy, by binding the nurturer they effectively prevented it from using powers that could have saved the red queen and her baby. If the party sets it free, and there is a particularly compassionate member of the party, the spirit will offer to teach that character a skill, or if the character is an arcane or mystic healer (or especially a Native American), the spirit may offer the character a sacred fetish for healing or defense.
The spirit will also reveal that the protective nature of the millipedes, constantly watching after the children of the village, is not due to anything the spirit has done. Rather, it was the last wish of the Red Queen to take care of her people, even after they had abandoned her.
The nurturer will openly lament the passing of the Red Queen and her baby. It will call her foolish to her corpse, lovingly passing a hand over her skull, and telling her that it would have helped them even without the binding, and would have done so with much more freedom and ability. It says all this aloud for the players to hear.
History
One of the Red Queens who escaped the Lone Star complex fled west, skirting past the hellhole that is White Sands. After a week, she found the rhyolite canyons to be the perfect place to call home, out of reach of the long arm of the The Coalition States.
With her entourage of over twenty people of various strengths and abilities, she converted a meager collection of caves into a well-appointed home for her and her followers. She even had a child and learned about love. This was her labefaction. She became aware and self-conscious of her manipulation of her followers. Out of affection for her people, she stopped using her chemicals and pheremones on them. The fanatical devotion her followers had to her was flipped when they realized that she had been manipulating them all along, caused them to leave their families and jobs for her and travel into this forsaken wilderness.... It's said that love and hate are just two sides of the same coin. Their fanatical devotion turned into scorned hatred. They all left her to her own devices and she slowly starved to death along with her infant child.
Somewhere in this section of rhyolite cliffs shown above is the entrance to the Red Queen's Colony
Type
Hideout
Parent Location
Included Locations
Connected Rooms
Comments
Author's Notes
This location is a possible vehicle to use to introduce a Red Queen player character. There are two obvious ways for this: First, have the original Red Queen still be alive, but barely, and she is the one controlling the millipedes to save the children. Second, put a barely alive young Red Queen in the place. It is one of her daughters. (please note that at two years old, the Red Queen would be physically equivalent to about an 18 year-old human, but without the emotional maturity due to both lack of time and lack of exposure to people.) One of the benefits of using the offspring as a potential character is that the additional human genetic infusion provided by her human father will enable her to be more empathetic and less inclined to dominate all other life forms than a first-generation Red Queen would be. This reduces the disruption potential of the race somewhat as far as party social interactions are concerned.